In the quiet of the pine forest in Vorzel, a once-idyllic suburb outside of Kyiv, many elderly residents from eastern Ukraine struggle to sleep.
After months, and years, of living in the epicenter of war, the silence feels unsettling.
At “Ridni Liudy”— or “Our People” — a residential community for those over 70 who lost their homes in the war, residents still flinch at sudden sounds. To them, silence carries the ominous dread before the next explosion.
Some seniors recount their escape in vivid sensory detail: the sound of shelling, the smells of smoldering fire, roads strewn with the remnants of war. Others go quiet and teary, reluctant to relive the difficult memories.
But each journey out of the war’s grip is a feat of astonishing physical endurance and determination to keep living. Many residents still can’t explain how they summoned the strength to endure the challenging and dangerous route, especially at their age.
When the roof of Nina Velykorodnova’s single-family home in Bakhmut collapsed on top of her after shelling, she had to dig herself out, and then her daughter. “Somehow we crawled out of there,” Velykorodnova, who is 79, told me when I visited the community in March.
Her husband went into the cellar during the attack, but the debris from the strike blocked the entrance.
Velykorodnova said she yelled for him and knocked on whatever walls remained. After hearing nothing, she decided to run with her daughter. Carrying only her retiree’s pension card, she climbed the fence and threaded her way through the neighbors’ yards amid shellfire.
In New York, a city in the Donetsk region, an explosion hurled 78-year-old Vira Lisova against a wall and shattered her jaw. Somewhere in the blur between life and death, she thought to reach for her cellphone. Bloodied and dazed, she crawled from the wreckage, searching for someone to help her.
In Ukraine’s war, the elderly tend to be the last to evacuate, clinging to their villages and cities long after those places have become barely fit for survival. Many have buried their spouses and pets in their backyards and saw their children scatter: some to safety, others to the front lines. With declining health, little family support and meager pensions — a typical Ukrainian pension is about 3,000 hryvnias, or roughly $70 a month — the prospect of starting over feels like a free fall into the unknown.
The question they ask most often has no good answer: “Where will I go?”
‘This generosity has changed me completely’
I met Olena Bezsmertna, a senior administrator and doting caregiver of “Our People” community, at a metro station on the outskirts of Kyiv. We drove along the same route that the Russian troops took in 2022 as they advanced toward Bucha, where they massacred hundreds of civilians and buried many of them in mass graves.
Bezsmertna is part of the team at “To Ukraine With Love,” a Utah-based nonprofit that has become known for building modular homes for Ukrainians left homeless by the war. The charity was also founded by Bezsmertna’s daughter Svitlana Miller, with whom she works side by side, traveling frequently between Utah and Ukraine.
I first met Miller when we were teenagers in Kyiv, participating in activities of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Today, her organization has raised more than $60 million, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has welcomed her to his office to thank Miller for helping provide homes to displaced Ukrainians.
On our way to the senior community, we took a detour because it was the anniversary of Bucha’s liberation, and Zelenskyy was visiting the city’s memorial to honor those killed in the massacre. The landscape still bears the scars of the first days of the invasion. Rusted tanks sat by the roadside, preserved as open-air museum pieces and reminders of one of the darkest chapters in Ukraine’s modern history.
Miller, who grew up in Kyiv, founded “To Ukraine With Love” days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. With Ukraine’s airspace closed, she asked her husband, who was preparing to fly a NATO mission, if he could persuade his commander in the Utah National Guard to transport humanitarian aid.
To her surprise, he agreed. Just days after the invasion began, the organization dispatched its first shipment to Ukraine.
Eventually, the nonprofit expanded from delivering humanitarian supplies to serving hot meals, constructing modular homes and building two residential communities in addition to the one in Vorzel. Since the war began, “To Ukraine With Love” has resettled more than 4,000 Ukrainians and built nearly 500 modular homes. Through monthly $10 donations, it provides meals to about 6,000 people every day.
Miller recalled one American family that chose to buy a smaller house so they could donate part of their down payment to help purchase a home for displaced Ukrainian families. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” she told me.
While Ukrainians are generous, she explained, giving to complete strangers halfway around the world is uncommon for Ukrainians.
“This generosity has changed me completely.”
Old Soviet camp turned home for elderly
Once scrolling through property listings for sale in Ukraine, Miller came across an old Soviet summer camp in the woods of Vorzel, a Soviet-era resort town known for its fresh air and health retreats. The site already had roads and utility infrastructure, making it a lot easier to redevelop than starting from scratch.
After securing a donor to purchase the property, she met with the property’s owner, a Ukrainian man who was so moved by Miller’s vision that he donated the camp’s 7,000-square-foot main house — built by German prisoners of war in 1956 — to the nonprofit.
Thanks to another donor who wished to remain anonymous, Miller and her team are building 20 more cottages for seniors. The main building is now home to 35 displaced Ukrainian seniors and, after all cottages are finished, will have a total of 170 seniors.
And there is a plan for more. Miller is working to secure funding to add another building that will house families with children and additional seniors — and include a bomb shelter and a hot meal center.
Before they enroll, seniors go through an interview process for administrators to learn their story and assess their needs.
Residents at “Our People” live free of charge, receive two meals a day and can stay indefinitely, even though some seniors still hope to receive government assistance to rebuild their home.
But the prospect of returning home feels distant for many. As Oleksandr Troshchii, a refugee from the Bakhmut area, put it to me: “What will I do with the compensation alone? There is nothing left of my town.”
People often arrive inconsolable, unable to restrain tears, Tetiana Ryabovolova, executive director of “To Ukraine With Love,” told me when I visited the community.
Some appear “frozen,” showing little emotion. The sadness then often turns to anger, she said.
“Grieving the loss of home is like grieving a loss of a loved one,” Ryabovolova said.
She compared the residents at their arrival to hedgehogs — prickly and reluctant to get anyone close, resistant to warmth and compliments.
But over time, she’s watched people soften and arrive at some measure of acceptance. “They think about the fact that they didn’t even have a bed of their own to die in,” Ryabovolova said. “But now they do.”
Learning to live together
Living in close proximity with others is an exercise in learning to adapt to communal living and being flexible with lifelong habits.
When Lena Dorofeeva interviewed to move into the community, she told the staff that she had been smoking for 50 years and didn’t think she could quit. The complex has rules that prohibit alcohol, but with smoking Bezsmertna was willing to be flexible.
“I told her that if she could keep the smoke out of the way and it wouldn’t bother others, it would be OK,” Bezsmertna said.
On Dorofeeva’s nightstand is a photo of her son, Arkadii, who served on the front lines, suffered a concussion and now lives in Dnipro. After fleeing Bakhmut with a single bag, Dorofeeva moved in with her son’s family. But the arrangement quickly unraveled.
She clashed with her daughter-in-law and eventually it got so bad that she was preparing to sleep at the train station. Shelters had no availability and her pension of about $67 wouldn’t even get close to covering rent.
Dorofeeva and her roommate, both in their 70s, have had to learn to work out their differences. “We learned to express what we like and what we don’t like,” said Dorofeeva. “We find compromises.”
When two residents got into an argument over a pot of food left in the wrong refrigerator, Bezsmertna didn’t try to determine who was at fault. Instead, Miller secured funding for more refrigerators.
Something to look forward to
Bezsmertna works hard to create a culture of inclusion within the community. When she catches women gossiping, she gently urges them to stop. “I tell them — we love each other; we don’t do that,” she said. She knows every senior by name and she knows their stories.
Part of creating a sense of home, in her view, is about giving people something they can look forward to, a life of dignity.
At “Our People,” there are birthday parties and holiday celebrations. The team hosts communal dinners and parties with a traditional twist like varenyky day (a Ukrainian dumpling). “I’m treated with not just attention, but with respect,” said Liudmyla Gordeeva, a refugee from Sloviansk. “I’m also learning a lot.”
Some seniors are entrusted communal responsibilities. Troshchii takes care of maintenance, drawing on his leadership at a large farm during the Soviet era. Iryna Grotevych was tapped to be an administrator after Bezsmertna watched how she patiently helped others with paperwork. “They understand the pain and they feel the ownership of the place,” Bezsmertna told me.
On Sundays, Bezsmertna, who is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, invites residents who wish to join her to worship at a chapel next to the faith’s temple in Kyiv.
Others are taken to Orthodox services, and some residents are Pentecostals.
She has also introduced them to “The Chosen.” Bezsmertna compared the Christian message of faith to an anesthetic that alleviates their pain.
But faith has not been the only salve. The senior center has also become a place to find love.
In June, two couples who met at the residential community got married. In the videos from the wedding, the seniors and staff, dressed in traditional embroidered clothing, are dancing in a circle with joy that the war has not managed to thwart.
“These people have looked evil in the face,” Miller, who was at the wedding, told me. “But they manage to wake up and smile to find love in the middle of a war after losing so much.”
‘I want to dream about something’
Even as they do crossword puzzles or play games, memories of abandoned and destroyed homes still haunt the residents.
“My dream will never come true — it is to return home,” said Iryna Grotevych, a refugee and one of the administrators, her voice pinched as her eyes welled up with tears.
Grotevych fled Selydove, a town in the Donetsk region, with her 96-year-old mother, a 90-year-old mother-in-law, a husband who was recovering after a heart attack, plus a cat and a dog. I asked if she knew she was capable of this kind of bravery. “Would you not do the same?” she asked me in a matter-of-fact manner. “They’re part of me.”
Vira Lisova said her city is now a dead zone and a wasteland. “There is no food or no water there,” she said.
In her hands, she held the cellphone that survived the explosion and is now held together by Scotch tape. “I wish I had wings to fly over there to see the ashes,” she told me. She’s grateful to have a place to enjoy the years at the sunset of life.
I asked Nina Velykorodnova whether she still thinks about her husband, who was trapped in the cellar when she fled the bombardment. She filed a missing-person report but never heard anything back. “There is not a minute that goes by that I don’t think about him,” she said. “What if he’s still alive?”
But she’s come to live with that unknowing. “It all just happened this way,” she said.
Oleksandr Troshchii is more stoic about his loss: “What’s gone is gone. You can’t do anything about it,” he said.
In the cafeteria, Nadiya Tkachuk was playing Chinese checkers with another resident. Tkachuk said, when she lived amid explosions, she hoped that when a missile strikes, her death would be immediate, so she would not have to live with injuries or disabilities.
Now, she has different hopes.
At “Our People,” she has made friends. She eats filling, abundant meals. The generosity of the staff has helped her heal.
Her life feels like a new beginning.
“Now, I want to live,” Tkachuk said. “I want to do something, dream about something.”